Visualizing the State of Government Debt Around the World (Update, 2021)

The COVID-19 pandemic forced governments around the world to go on a spending spree to prop up their economies. At the same time, fear of the virus combined with strict lockdowns are keeping people at home, causing tax revenues to plummet. How has this ultimately impacted the world’s debt? This visualization breaks down the debt to GDP ratio for each country around the world.

Japan still has the highest debt to GDP ratio in the world at 257%, which is significantly higher than other developed countries.

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly increased government debt around the world, with 3 countries now over 200% of debt to GDP and 32 over 100%.

 Government Debt Around the World

At the opposite end of the spectrum, a handful of petro countries carry very little debt, including Kuwait (14%), Russia (18%) and Saudi Arabia (31%).

The coronavirus pandemic is far from over, and many countries are continuing to spend a lot of money to support their economies, suggesting government debt will only continue to get worse in the future.

We created our visualization by taking debt to GDP ratios for each country around the world according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The numbers represent figures for 2021. This measure is important because it puts government debt within the context of the size of each country’s economy.

For example, the U.S. has a massive economy and can tolerate a lot more debt than somewhere with a comparably smaller economy, like Greece. In this case we adjusted the size of the county and its color to correspond to the level of debt, providing a unique snapshot into the growing debt problem lots of countries are experiencing.

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://howmuch.net/articles/state-of-the-worlds-government-debt-2021